Tag: Dejan Židan

Exit, Židan

After six years of running the Social Democrats, Dejan Židan announced on Thursday that he is getting the fuck out of Dodge, leaving the party in the hands of its senior MEP Tanja Fajon.

Tanja Fajon taking over from Dejan Židan (photo: SD)

Obviously, Židan is not leaving the party itself as he has no reason to. He is, however, reducing himself to a lowly MP. Which he should, as his six years at the helm of the direct descendant of the Slovenian Communist party were, for all intents and purposes, a series of missed opportunities. It also provides a much-needed respite from bad pop-rock puns in post titles on this blog but that is another matter.

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Culture Minister Becomes A Short-Timer

Remember pengovsky’s rant on how the culture porfolio is almost always an afterthought during government forming in Muddy Hollows? Well, guess what. Turns out Dejan Prešiček (Team Social Democrats) who runs the culture portfolio is seeing his political career hang by a thread due to allegations that include – does this sound familiar? – misuse of a government vehicle.

Tick-tock… Dejan Prešiček (SD) becomes a short-timer. (source)

In fact, the allegations are far more serious than that and include accusations of workplace harassment, mobbing and abuse of office by both the minister and his state secretary. Which is quite an achievement for someone who has only been in office six, nay, five months.

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Life Imitating Art Imitating Life

With the last of the committee hearings slowly drawing to a close, the newly-minted Slovenian PM Marjan Šarec will submit his entire cabinet for parliamentary approval later this week and presumably get his government up and running. Thus a protracted three-month episode which culminated in a five-member coalition and a minority government, supported by the left-most party in the parliament, will finally come to an end. But, in the words of the worst British finance minister of the 20th century, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of an end. But it is, perhaps, an end of a beginning.


Marjan Šarec impersonating a PM (left) and being one. (source and source)

While this blog was mum due to vacay, pengovsky did a few media appearances on the coalition clusterfuck. Financial Times, The Europeans podcast and The Economist were among the victims (although, to the latter’s credit, apparently my bit got edited out). N1, a Croatian private news network, even had their viewers endure a 15-minute interview where yours truly bumbles along in Croatian. The gist of all this attention was two-fold: how come Janez Janša didn’t get to be PM and how come Šarec did?

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Writing On The Wall

In a development that came as a surprise to a grand total of zero people (save possibly to the man himself), president Pahor announced on Monday that he will not be nominating a candidate for the post of prime minister. With this, the first round of attempts to form a government following the election on 3 June came to an end.


(source)

Despite the brouhaha that surrounded the event, nothing spectacular had in fact happened. Other than the fact that The Prez has once again talked himself into a corner out of which there was no clean way out which is why he resorted to fear-mongering and his drama-queen act.

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Mechanics of Coalition Building

It has been ten days since election in Muddy Hollows and President Pahor convened the inaugural session of the new parliament for this coming Friday. This means personnel decision are looming and with no coalition deal in sight nervousness is starting to set in.


(source)

What we have seen in the past week or so were polar opposites in approaching the conundrum at hand: One side there is the presumptive PM nominee Janez Janša playing his cards as close to the vest as possible, while on the other side there’s the nominal runner-up Marjan Šarec who is producing all kinds of chatter about “coalition exploration”, “platform compatibility” and other buzzwords du jour.

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